Friday, March 2, 2012

Guest Author: Victoria Costello

Today I'm honored to have author Victoria Costello guest posting on the blog. Costello is a well-respected science journalist and author of six books on topics related to psychology, mental health, and parenting. Her most recent book, A Lethal Inheritance: A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Generations of Mental Illness, is a personal memoir of her family's struggle with depression and schizophrenia. I will be reviewing the book soon, but I have already started reading it and I have to say it is compelling and insightful. If you or someone you know is dealing with mental illness, this book is a must-read. Please enjoy the post today which offers insight into some of the issues discussed in the book.

The
Tangled Truth of Depressed Moms—and Our Kids

By
Victoria Costello

Imagine you are the mother in this scenario. For several
months now, your 12 year-old daughter has lost her sunny nature, and she often
seems sad and withdrawn. Her teacher tells you she's stopped participating in
class and appears tired. You fear she's becoming depressed
because you've, had bouts of the blues yourself—as did your mother (or, perhaps,
your father) before you. No one in the family ever received mental health
treatment, so the idea of doing something about it (for either you or your
daughter) feels foreign. You wonder, wouldn't
that be weak, and, besides, what will people say?

Speaking as the daughter of a depressed father and the
mother of a depressed son, and as someone who has lived with major depression,
this scenario, including the fear of weakness and stigma, is all too familiar
to me. I only sought treatment for my lifelong depression after my oldest son
was diagnosed with another mental disorder—and that was when I was forty-six.
Since beginning on antidepressants, my depression has been in remission. Now,
as a science writer who has looked deeply into family mental illness, I take
every opportunity to inform other mothers what I've learned about family risk
for depression and other genetically conferred mental disorders and how to head
them off in your children.

Most people are aware that depression runs in families, but
our knowledge tends to stop there. Myrna Weissman is a psychiatric
epidemiologist who has spent three decades trying to find out exactly how this
occurs, conducting research at Columbia University and New York Psychiatric
Institute. "If the mother is depressed and just one other close relative
in the family has a history of depression we know the children are likely to
show up with either anxiety or depression by the time they're fifteen,"
Myrna Weissman told me in an interview for my book, A Lethal Inheritance.

One study
she conducted over twenty years involved 161 grandchildren and their parents
and grandparents. Among Weissman's findings: there was a threefold higher risk
of depression or an anxiety disorder (59 percent) for grandchildren who had a
depressed grandparent and
depressed parent. She notes that anxiety disorder appears to precede depression
in young children.

Severity of the child's mood disorder also increased with
two prior generations of depression. But then came this striking finding: when
the children had depressed parents but not moderate or severely depressed
grandparents, the grandchildren's impairment was less. In other words, if left
untreated, the grandparent's depression was the decisive factor in the severity
of the child's disorder. Each of these results was compared to a control group
of three-generation families without depression.

Another of Weissman's pioneering studies measured
the effects on young children of (only) treating their mothers' depression. Of
those children who shared a diagnosis of depression with their mothers at the
beginning of the mother's treatment, remission of symptoms was reported in a
third of cases when their mothers' treatment worked, compared with only a 12
percent remission rate among those whose mothers' depression did not improve
after treatment. It's important to note that the children who improved did not
receive direct treatment! All children of recovering mothers who themselves did
not begin with a diagnosis for depression remained free of psychiatric
diagnoses at three months, whereas 17 percent of the children whose mothers
remained depressed acquired a psychiatric diagnosis.

The takeaway from Myrna Weissman's research is that when a
mother gets treatment first, a child is much less likely to suffer from either
depression or anxiety. So, if you are a depressed parent getting help you can
think of your actions as the best form of prevention for your child.

Another reason is that if you are in treatment you are
probably also more informed about the symptoms of depression and how they may
differ in children. Research is constantly giving us more valuable clues to
help head off mental disorders before they take hold; for example, a just
released study
in the journal Pediatrics
showing that irritability can be an early sign of depression in younger kids.

Still, getting a diagnosis for something that has always
been part of you-and perhaps the
defining characteristic of many members of your family going back
generations-can be a truly strange experience. Omnipresent depression (or
anxiety) doesn't feel like a symptom; rather it can seem more like a
personality trait. According to a U.S. government survey, this familiarity is a
major reason people give for not seeking mental health treatment. Other common
reasons are a fear of being stigmatized and a lack of access to care. On this
point, I can also say from experience that if you don't have insurance
coverage, you still have the option of going to your county mental health
clinic where everyone is accepted for treatment and where the care is often as
good or better than that received in private doctors' offices.

My message to mothers is fix
you first. Then you may not even have to take your child to see a mental
health practitioner. If symptoms of an emotional or cognitive (thought or
learning) disturbance are already present in a child, act sooner rather than
later. As my sons and I learned, the next best thing to "fixing mom
first" is getting help together.

About Me

I am a wife and new mother with a PhD in Human Development and Family Sciences. While completing my degree, I realized there was not enough research-based parenting and child development information that was easy to understand for the average parent. Much of the research done by university scholars is not easily accessible to parents. With this blog I hope to provide thought-provoking and insightful information that will be useful to parents. I don't pretend to be a parenting expert, but rather a translator of research into a parent-friendly format.